The Master (The Curse of Fatal Death)
A particularly incompetent incarnation of the Master, contemporary to the "listless" Ninth Doctor sought to finally defeat his foe on the forsaken planet of Tersurus.
Biography
While spying on the Doctor, the Master inadvertently enabled two way communication and unwittingly revealed his plans to eliminate the Doctor. After the two had arranged to meet on Tersurus, it became apparent the Master had travelled back in time to bribe a Tersuron architect to install traps in the castle they were now in. Unbeknown to him, the Doctor had also done the same, bribing the architect with food to change the traps' details. This led to the Master floundering around the sewers of Tersurus for over nine centuries, after falling down the same trap three times. Later he allied himself with the Daleks, and then used his very own TARDIS to travel back to the point just after he fell. Then he threatened the Doctor once again with the Daleks, as they were the only life-forms without noses and hence the only creatures willing to work with him.
As part of this alliance, the Master had himself "augmented" with Dalek technology, resulting in a more youthful appearance and "Dalek bumps" on his chest. Although he remained adamant they were etheric beam locators, the Doctor continually teased the Master because they resembled breasts.
When he believed the Twelfth Doctor to have been killed by the zectronic beam, the Master renounced his evil ways before the Doctor regenerated into a female form. Attracted to each other, the Time Lords walked off, arm in arm. (TV: The Curse of Fatal Death)
Personality
This incarnation of the Master was just as melodramatic and hammy as ever, frequently laughing maniacally and taking pleasure in explaining his evil plans at great length.
He was also significantly more inept than other versions of the Master, monitoring the Doctor in his TARDIS and gloating about the traps he had set without realising that he was on speakerphone until the Doctor informed him. After deactivating his viewscreen, he continued to monologue in what he thought was privacy, unaware that he had just switched the screen off and was still audible to the Doctor. He also inadvertently fell into a trap he had set for the Doctor no less than three times. Over nine hundred years, he developed some questionable appetites and behaviours with slugs.
The Master's incompetence manifested itself again when he failed to realise that the Daleks were planning to exterminate him once had assisted them in completing the death ray. In fact, so lacking in common sense was the Master that when the Doctor used the language of the Tersuruns to discreetly (and pungently) inform him of the Daleks' intentions, the Master gave the game away by blurting it out loud, causing the Daleks to try and exterminate him post haste. This Master's uncharacteristic lack of intelligence was further demonstrated by his inability to repair the exploding generator, admitting that only the Doctor had the capacity to do so.
Despite being a rival with the Doctor for many years, he was devastated that his old foe may not regenerate again, and decided to become good in his memory. However, the Doctor did regenerate, this time as a woman. The Master fell in love with the Doctor and became lovers. (TV: The Curse of Fatal Death)
Behind the scenes
- A behind-the-scenes featurette on the making of the spoof denotes this Master as "the Seventeenth Master". In the special itself, he is not referred to as anything other than the Master. This numbering reflects the incarnations that had, at the point of airing, appeared:
- The Thirteenth Master, as portrayed by Peter Pratt, Geoffrey Beevers, and arguably Roger Delgado.
- The Fourteenth Master, as portrayed by Anthony Ainley.
- The Fifteenth Master, as portrayed by Gordon Tipple.
- The Sixteenth Master, as portrayed by Eric Roberts.
- This Master was designed as a pastiche of Roger Delgado's portrayal of the Master during the Third Doctor's era.
- When initially pitching The Curse of Fatal Death, Steven Moffat deliberately linked his story treatment to the gap between "the Roger Delgado-faced Master running away at the end of Frontier in Space and Peter Pratt's cowled and rotted-faced incarnation turning up in The Deadly Assassin." This was eventually abandoned, with the Master instead walking off into the distance with the freshly regenerated Doctor.[1]
- Jonathan Pryce has laughingly referred to this role as spoiling his chances to ever play the real Master.[2]
